The Warriors eBook

Hence, even scientifically considered, the final aim
of thinking must be, to arrive at some thought which
will take hold of this primary fact of sin and uproot
it; which will show how the world may be purged of
sin.

Slowly but inevitably we are moving to this great
Thought. It is summed up in one word: Redemption.
The watchword of a century ago was gravitation.
It explained the poise of the universe by a great and
hitherto undiscovered law. The watchword of yesterday
was evolution. It explains progressive change:
the mounting-up of life “through spires of form.”
The forms of the universe are seen in a series which
is in the main ascendant, and in which the survivor
is supreme. The watchword of to-morrow is Redemption.
The Thinker will some day live, who will make that
great word Redemption stand out in all its vast majesty
and significance. This, I take it, is the work
of our new century.

Redemption is the explanation of the existence of
man, of his present progress, and his future destiny.
It is the great mystery of joy in which the race partakes;
the spiritual culmination of all things earthly; the
forecast of eternal things yet to be.

Redemption is not a dogma; it is a life. Redemption
is a perpetual and ascendant moral growth. It
marks a world-balm, a world-change. It is in
the spirit of man that it works, and not in his outer
condition, or external strivings. It is ultimately
to root sin out of the world.

Through stormy sorrows and perpetual desolations comes
the race to God. Zion is the Whole of things—­the
encompassment of space, and time, and endless years,—­an
environment of immortality and peace.

Virtue leads the race to Joy, and there is no byway
to this height. The final aspect of the universe
is joy. Joy is elemental—­a vast vibration
that sweeps through centuries as years! A day
in His courts is as a thousand, and a thousand years
are as one day, because they thrill with an immortal
and imperishable emotion. The seraphim and cherubim,
Sandalphon and Azrael, are angels of enduring joy.
Joy is the soul’s share of the life of God.

Thus when the world has breathed to us the holy name
of Christ, it has told us the highest that it knows.
The March of Sages is toward a Redeemer! The
banner of Wisdom is furled about the Cross!

IV. THE WORLD-MARCH: OF TRADERS

[AMSTERDAM]

Lo, my soul, look
forth abroad
And mark
the busy stir:
Wouldst thou say, in
pride and scorn,
Our God
is not in her!
Nay, the bonds, the
wares, the coin,—­
These, in
truth, are passing things;
Other treasures thrill
the life
Of earth’s
great merchant kings!

We, they say, would
wake the power
In mountain
and in mine;
And transport, from
sea to sea,
The cedar,
oak, and pine:
Build the bridge, and
plant the town,
Enter every
open mart;
Make our nation’s
commerce flow,—­
But this
is not our heart!